I Made This! Or Rather, I am Making This!

The past 8-9 weeks I have been involved in APN's Edmonton Playwright's Circle working on a piece called Little Monsters.  The Circle experience has been great. Led by facilitator Conni Massing and filled with 8 playwrights of various stages in their writing career, we supported each other and helped everyone to write the best play they could. The most important thing for me is that it gave me deadlines and those are so much easier to write towards than a blank future.  Accountability is so important for a writer.  It would be wonderful to think that we could motivate ourselves, but for me, it is the deadline.  Anyhow, I started this piece at Playworks Ink in November during a workshop with Daniel MacIvor.  Prior to the workshop I did not even know it was a play.  I was about halfway done a first draft by mid-December, but I stalled until I joined the circle.  I stuck it in my life in a time I thought was pretty free (that was thrown off by Gibson being in Titanic) but I made it work - hammering out a rough first draft that I was very happy with and a second draft that I was even more happy with.  It still has a way to go, but in the 9 weeks of the circle I have done so much more writing than I have in the last 2-3 years. 

Anyhow, TONIGHT the Circle is sharing excerpts from our plays with the public for FREE! We got to select the excerpt and work with professional actors and a director today and tonight they will be presented.  It is at 7:30 p.m. in the EC Board Room at the Transalta Bus Barns. One of the actors asked me if I had slept last night in anticipation and to be honest, I slept very well.  When I saw the list of actors that would be reading my script (Nadien Chu, Annette Loiselle and Mat Busby) I was really relaxed about it.  They are all very good and actually well suited to the roles they read. Having Tracy Carroll shepherd them as Director didn't hurt either. I love my Circle Playwrights, but it is a different thing to hear your words read by real actors who try different things and go for it. Tonight will be extra exciting to hear it read with an audience in the house. I hope you can come!

Comments

Annemarie said…
SOOO??!? Follow up entry, please!! How did it go?
5/01/2012 5:26 AM
Finster said…
It was a great night! I was really impressed with how the four actors created such different characters in a short window of time. I was really, really pleased with my own piece. It sounded like it did in my head and that is all I can ask for. I was also impressed with the turn-out. Lots of people there to enjoy the exposure to new works.
5/01/2012 7:12 PM
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